


In Despite

by Amber



Category: History Boys - Bennett
Genre: First Kiss, High School, M/M, Quotations, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-22
Updated: 2008-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Backstory, forwardstory, and a little subjunctive storytelling. | Dakin lends Posner a Smiths tape and gets treated as though he invented Morrissey. (Although, Posner listens to Ella Fitzgerald, so one assumes he has to be desperately longing for some real culture.) He messes Posner's hair as though he were a little brother, and practically sees his heart flutter. The world may adore him because he's handsome and acts like a total cock, but behind all this shirtlifting nonsense Posner seems to be ridiculously genuine, and Dakin wonders why no-one has ever felt this for him before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Despite

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Caitlin.

Dakin knows he's good. Great, even. Supreme perfection. He's positive he's the most fantastic human being in this world or the next. Still, it's nice to be reminded sometimes.

That's where Posner comes in, of course.

Originally, he'd just thought it'd be brilliant to have a lackey. The boys in the class all adore him, but they're _independent thinkers_. Akhtar has no problem telling him where he can stick it, Timms likes to mess up his hair, and Scripps — well, Scripps spends almost more time trying to bring Dakin down from his pedestal than he does on anything else, including homework and chapel service.

(Chapel service, partaking of Christ's body, on your knees before a priest… it all sounds a little homoerotic to Dakin, truth be told. Which is what he tells Scripps in the changing rooms and the bastard just raises an insufferable eyebrow; "Not everything's about sex, Dakin."

To which he agrees. Not _everything_ is about sex. But it's still damn important.)

Posner's small and awkward and even boys two years his junior have no fear calling him names to his face. But he doesn't seem to care. Not in the brush-off way the others might take it, that faux-apathy which is so cool, but just true indifference to what other people think.

"Why should I care?" Posner says when Dakin asks him, his tone not at all defensive. His eyes don't even lift from the book he's reading, as though he's missing the importance and privilege inherent in Dakin taking time out of his schedule to come over and speak to the little twerp.

Dakin sprawls back in his chair, legs wide. Posner whispered in deference to the library rules; he doesn't bother. "Didn't those cock-ups in 4A throw your bag about? Wouldn't want them to break something."

"I don't have anything breakable in it," Posner says placidly. "From experience."

"Look—" he flicks a corner of Posner's book, and the boy finally looks up at him, a little myopically. "They think they have all the right in the world to walk all over you, doesn't that bother you even a touch?"

"O yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill, to pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt and taints of blood…" At Dakin's blank stare, he trails off with a little sigh. "It's Tennyson. Don't you listen in Hector's classes?"

"Why would I do that?" scoffs Dakin. After all, they're the easiest classes to get away with not listening in, and in the end purely another grade on the A-levels card, something else to put him above and beyond the Oxbridge set. "That old nance."

This, more than slights to his own person, creases Posner's thin lips into a delicate frown. "He's not that—!" a glare from the librarian, and he lowers his voice. "He's not that bad. I'm taking tuition with him for A-Levels next semester."

Dakin twists his lips into a sort of knowing grimace. "It's all right for you. At least he leaves you well alone. Not interested in a fetus, I suppose." Posner hums and sighs and shrugs a shoulder, so Dakin reaches over and punches him lightly on the arm. "When someone says something like that, don't just act all agreeable or it's permission to say it again. Tell them to fuck off."

Posner rubs at his shirtsleeve as though the blow could have hurt. "I'm fine, Dakin, really," he says, flipping his book back to the correct page. "It's hardly the Spanish Inquisition."

That would have been the end of Dakin's self-imposed quest for an underling, except that very afternoon Crowther says something and Dakin says; "Look, you lot, leave off him for a bit. I mean, he's hardly worth our time, is he?"

It must have worked. "The shrimp's going to fail history," Scripps tells him in the lunchroom, breath hot in Dakin's ear.

"What, Posner? That brainiac couldn't fail a class if he tried."

"He's trying pretty bloody hard. Spent the whole lesson turning around to glance at _you_. Don't tell me you didn't notice."

Dakin studies his fingernails nonchalantly. "It's a common occurrence."

"Fuck right off, Dakin," Scripps laughs.

"It's understandable, is all! If Posner wants to pine for me, let him. Better he have something more interesting in his life than nineteenth century romance novels, or whatever it is he likes." And they both laugh, but the sentiment sticks.

The day Posner comes to sit with them at lunch, Scripps just slides across the seat and says "'Allo, Pos," like he's an old friend. Akhtar snorts and nudges Lockwood, and everyone looks at Dakin, but that's the end of it. Dakin's indifference becomes everyone's indifference. Of course, there're catcalls, even Rudge throws about a remark or two because they're bored and brilliant, but there's no real sport in mocking someone who doesn't care.

At the end of term, Dakin signs up for extra-credit tuition with Hector.

"Well," he says, the first afternoon of it. "Here we are then."

"Yes," says Posner in his piping tenor, and gives Dakin a look of longing straight out of a Jane Austen novel, which Dakin pretends not to notice.

The big nance isn't so bad, as it turns out, and even more distractable and rambling than he is in class. Hector has them read poetry to him, and while Posner reads with clarity and startling emotion, Dakin lolls smirking on the edge of his desk, letting suggestion slip into every syllable.

"Yet love me not, nor seek thou to allure my thoughts with your beauty, were it more divine," he says, barely glancing at the transcription he memorized on the first read, and instead dividing his attention between Hector's appraising gaze and Posner's shy one. "Thy smiles and kisses I cannot endure. I'll not be wrapped up in those arms of thine." He grins at Posner. "Now show it, if thou be a _woman_ right… embrace and love and kiss me in despite."

Hector gives him a wry grimace. "Maybe a little less sarcasm in that last stanza, Dakin. Now — hrrrm, yes, thoughts on the poem. Thomas Campion speaks dismissively of love in all his poetry, but this is different. It's got an almost… reverent feel to it, yes? Dakin, what do you think."

"Well, sir," says Dakin. "To be completely honest, I think our Thomas is being a bit of a tease."

Hector hits him with the Norton anthology, but it's worth it for the look on Posner's face.

From then on, he does all his cultivating in the extra lessons, and none of the others are any the wiser as to why Posner's suddenly infatuated.

"You should get him to do your homework for you or something," Scripps tells him. "Give the blighter something to do, put him out of his misery."

Dakin rolls his eyes. "I can do my own homework, thanks, or are you forgetting I'm almost top of the form?"

"Though how you manage that's anyone's guess," Timms interjects. "Being that you spend all your spare time jerking off." He ducks Dakin's smack with a cheeky chuckle.

"You should make your move now, Dakin," adds Akhtar. "Before poor Possy hits puberty and stops looking like a little girl."

"You feel so sorry for him, you bugger him," retorts Dakin waspishly. The thought of Posner growing out of being delicate and sensitive and pretty unnerves him in some nameless way. "'Sides, he's too spineless for me."

"Makes him _flexible_," says Akhtar, making an obscene full-body gesture, and Dakin flips him off.

Still. It's worrisome because even though he's careful never to address too many comments to him in public, he's beginning to quite enjoy Posner's company. It's not as though he's _romantically interested_; no matter how many times Posner sings the blues in his direction, accompanied by Scripps' jaunty piano and a bunch of knowing sniggers.

No, Dakin like girls, and more importantly Dakin likes a challenge, so it's about time he did something to stop the rumors. He sets his sights on the biggest challenge he can find on short notice — Fiona, the Headmaster's secretary. He starts dropping flowers in her in-tray.

But as he waits for her to fall for his endless charm, the words _a blowjob's a blowjob_ are beginning to reoccur at the back of Dakin's mind.

He'd do it, too, because Posner has to be better than wanking. And he's secure in his sexuality; his parents had packed him off to an all-boys because they were absolutely positive he'd get some girl pregnant at thirteen. But if he did, and Posner got clingy (as he inevitably would) or worse _told_ someone, then Dakin would have to ignore him for the rest of the school year.

That's not going to happen. Posner's too interesting to talk to. He listens when Dakin speaks — and doesn't turn absolutely everything into a joke the way the others do. Dakin knows he's fantastic, but Posner acts like what he says really _matters_. It's nice to have someone treat him like he shits gold.

Dakin lends Posner a Smiths tape and gets treated as though he invented Morrissey. (Although, Posner listens to Ella Fitzgerald, so one assumes he has to be desperately longing for some real culture.) He messes Posner's hair as though he were a little brother, and practically sees his heart flutter. The world may adore him because he's handsome and acts like a total cock, but behind all this shirtlifting nonsense Posner seems to be ridiculously genuine, and Dakin wonders why no-one has ever felt this for him before.

And yes, sometimes he does feel guilty for manipulating the poor sod — he's not a totally heartless bastard, after all.

But not too much, either. Dakin doesn't do introspection.

Then Irwin comes, and everything changes.

If Posner has been shaped into a bastion of comfortable security, Irwin spins him off his axis. Teachers, thinks Dakin, shouldn't be so damn unpredictable. Dakin doesn't know how to manipulate him. He doesn't fawn over their schoolwork, or react to their jokes, or grow peevish at their piss-takes. Everything outside his ambitions gets put to the side.

Dakin likes that kind of focus. He wants it directed on him.

(For a brief instant, tagging self-consciously behind Irwin in the hallways, Dakin suddenly has a remarkably enormous feeling of sympathy for Posner; who, to his credit, has properly approached manliness over the summer. While he's still a complete poofter, his balls have dropped and he's at least taller.

Braver, too, perhaps.)

Now that he's conquered Fiona, he intends to move on to an even greater challenge.

Posner's no longer even hiding the fact that he's in love with Dakin, and that makes rolling his eyes and groaning a little easier because honestly, he's not interested in trying to keep up a relationship with an actual girl, let alone his very own human puppydog.

"Do you even like me?" Posner asks impatiently of him in those brief moments before their extra-credit Friday class starts.

"Of course!" starts Dakin, and at the shine from Posner's eyes he slumps over his desk with a melodramatic sigh. "Don't be an idiot, Posner. This isn't like some book or a poem or something. Just because I like you, doesn't mean I want to fuck you."

Posner winces but ploughs on. "I'd let you, you know."

If it wasn't for Irwin, that might have ended very differently. Subjunctive history, and all that. However, Dakin just reaches out a hand to cuff his ear lightly. "Don't be a doormat, Pos." And he walks out of the classroom.

Every day for the next week Posner leaves the classroom and waits for an opportunity to talk to Dakin in private again. And every day for that week Dakin rides with Hector rather than face him. Eventually he stops just so _Hector_ doesn't start getting the wrong idea and take a real fancy to him too.

Unrequited lust is a bitch.

Dakin _thinks_ he's subtle about it. It's only when Scripps asks "So when's the wedding?" in a quiet, serious tone that means he's not sure the others should be in on this joke that Dakin realizes perhaps he isn't quite so.

"He's just magnetic," says Dakin, with an uncharacteristic helplessness to his tone which makes Scripps look at him with a very amused sort of pity.

"Oh, Dakin," he says, and then adds: "Still. At least he doesn't run around with his pants off."

"Wouldn't mind if he did," admits Dakin, and then raises an eyebrow at his friend. "Besides, as though you don't take every opportunity to stare at my arse."

"Not _me_," says Scripps meaningfully.

Dakin stuffs his hands deep into his pockets. "Lay off, Scripps."

"You know, Posner's fairly sure it's not unrequited."

Dakin hisses through his teeth. "Look, Posner's delusional, I've not had any interest in him ever, and if he's going to say—"

"Not him," says Scripps, in that tone of voice that means Dakin's being a spectacular idiot and he'll laugh as much as he wants because if Dakin calls it he'll go and share with the other boys. "You and Irwin."

"Fuck," breathes Dakin, and then: "Fuck. Really?"

The news fills him with a sort of overwhelming generosity, enough that he starts spending time with Posner again, basking in the adoration and knowing that he is, he truly is the centre of the universe.

Irwin kept changing the subject, so as they walk to where the photo's being taken over the rolling green plains Dakin pulls him away from the group a little.

"Nice work telling them to fuck off," he starts.

"Yes," says Posner, deeply sardonic. "You've taught me well."

"Thing is," Dakin says, his smile easy. "What with you being a queer Jewish monk and all, I figured you could give me the inside scoop on which team our youthful schoolmaster's playing for."

"I'm not going to help him!" says Posner, which should be all the answer Dakin needs, but he presses to be sure.

"Then help me," he says.

Posner trots faster, but Dakin keeps up. "If you must know, I thought he was. I figured I could have some, I don't know, company…"

A thought occurs to Dakin, one that is startling in its insecurity; "You don't fancy him, do you?"

If Posner had ever before been capable of turning scorn in Dakin's direction, he had chosen to wait until now to do so. "Company in liking you," he says, a little hurt, and Dakin instantly feels both exuberant and awful. Irwin doesn't think him a complete twat. Yet Posner probably does. He's not yet quite sure it's worth losing one for the other; the effect of Posner should be such that he heals any rejection from Irwin.

"Pass the parcel, boys," Hector's saying as he trundles along the grass, and Dakin leans in so his lips brush velvety over Posner's earlobe.

"_Peut-être nous pourrions commencer un ménage de trios,_" he whispers wickedly, and smirks at the camera, blinking in the after-image the flash burns onto the back of his eyeballs.

And when everything else is an ending, Dakin's future stretches out bright before him, filled with learning and potential and really fantastic sex.

"Physical therapy," he says to Irwin as they pass each other in the aisles. And it's terrible, because it's Hector's funeral and they should be solemn and straight faced and all that shit, but Irwin gives him that _you're not serious_ look and Dakin grins back. "Write it in your diary."

Even a car-crash won't get in the way of his determination.

Afterwards they all stand outside watching as the guests they don't know leave and quoting Hector's favourite bits of poetry. Like the flash burning his eyes, Dakin can't stop seeing the old nance crying, Posner's gentle hand on his shoulder. He wants to remember the man by anything else but ass he sees is those grotesque, embarrassing sniffles.

One by one, everyone else leaves, promising to call or write or pop 'round to the other side of campus and paper his room (Dakin doesn't think he's serious, but puts 'warn roommates about Akhtar' on his mental to do list.) Eventually it's just him with his cigarette up against the wall, and Posner hovering as ephemeral as the smoke.

"What do you want, Pos?" Dakin asks him, slightly surprised to find he sounds tired.

"Aren't you going home? I was considering following you, I always wanted to see where you lived."

"Don't feel much like going home just yet," says Dakin, ducking his head and throwing the cigarette to the ground. "What do you really want?"

"Dakin's reward," says Posner, and to his dying day Dakin will never be sure whether the tone held mockery.

Posner kisses very much like a girl, with a bare hint of tongue, the driest lip brushes turning a little sloppy and it's such a detached kiss on both their parts that it wouldn't have meant anything if it wasn't for Posner's hand tight and trembling around Dakin's wrist.

"Was that all?" asks Dakin, affecting boredom.

"Somehow I thought you'd be much better at it," says Posner, fingers reaching up to trace his lips lightly, and that's enough motivation for Dakin to kiss him properly, just to prove him wrong.

Afterwards they're both rumpled and breathless and Posner's cheeks are tinged pink.

"Don't become him," Dakin says fiercely, because he's been thinking about this. He somewhat suspects without him around Posner will regress to dull placidity. Or worse. "Don't you dare, just to honour his memory or some bollocks like that. Don't become … don't be seen as a fool just because of what you are."

"Can I become Irwin?" asks Posner, but he's not very good at double-entendre.

"Go home," says Dakin, maybe a little harsher than he'd intended, and Posner — always obedient — makes as if to leave, then turns and stops and stares at Dakin from the curb, lighting another cigarette (smoking and snogging on school grounds, not that it's really rebellion now that this is his _former_ grammar school.)

"Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner," says Posner in his piping Audrey Hepburn voice, limbs as stiff as boards. "Just drive away and leave me as I leave you. I don't know how to say goodbye. I can't think of any words."

"Goodbye, Posner," says Dakin with heavy finality, and doesn't look up from his cigarette until he is certain Posner has finally gone.


End file.
